As predicted U.S. solar capacity grew more than 400% in 4 years

This month’s eia report confirms that solar did exactly what
former FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff predicted:
“That’s what is happening in solar. It could double every two years.”
Wellinghoff’s further prediction remains on the money:
“…at its present growth rate, solar will overtake wind in about ten years. It is going to be the dominant player.”
Because of exponential growth like compound interest caused by ever-falling
solar PV costs,
solar will win like the Internet did.

U.S. solar capacity increased significantly in the last 4 years. In
2010, the total solar capacity was 2,326 MW which accounted for a
comparatively small fraction (0.22%) of the total U.S. electric
generating. capacity. By February 2014, this capacity increased 418%
to 12,057 MW, a 9,731 MW gain, and now accounts for almost 1.13% of
total U.S. capacity. Reported planned solar capacity additions
indicate continued growth

12,057 / 2,326 = 5.18 times, which is more than 2 * 2 = 4,
ergo Wellinghoff was right.
Sure, you can argue that most of this increase happened before he made
his prediction in August 2013,
but the 2013 numbers weren’t out then, so part of this new growth record
is after anything he knew, and it turns out his doubling every two years
was conservative.

Even that report under-represents real solar generation,
because it doesn’t count solar power used on the customer side of the meter,
which is where most rooftop solar power goes, including my 15 kiloWatts
on my farm workshop.

The eia report concludes:

Each of the three sectors that have contributed to the significant
overall solar gains also has strong near term growth prospects.
Currently, there are 6,459 MW of proposed utility scale PV and 1,841
MW of proposed thermal solar. Many of the same factors driving
utility-level solar are expected to push net metered capacity as
well.

Remember
Moore’s Law for solar power, the observation that solar power costs
keep dropping exponentially and causing exponentially increasing
eployment, much like the prices of computing power (CPUs, memory, disks)
kept dropping and driving up deployment of computers, smartphones, and tablets,
not to mention the Internet?
Also known as Swanson’s law,
to emphasize that it’s manufacturing capacity that is driving down solar costs,
not efficiency improvements?
Those are the factors to which eia seems to allude.

In summary, the U.S. solar capacity has moved quickly from a
relatively small contributor to the nation’s total electric capacity
into a one of comparative significance. Much like the wind sector
growth, which grew tremendously from 6,456 MW in January 2005 to
60,661 MW to January 2014, solar capacity is quite clearly up and
coming.

We should get on with
powering the southeast and every U.S. state
and the world with sun, wind, and water.
More here
on how solar power is rising on Georgia, the southeast, the U.S., and the world.
All the fossil fuel companies, and all their electric utilities, can not stop that sun from coming up.